The hard life of Chinesepod (fictitious) Characters

I definitely see Yang Jie's diary being stolen and used as blackmail material. "Wear this ridiculous dress and hair style to prom, or else!!!" Do the Chinese have anything similar to a prom or homecoming?

@AZERDocMom: This somehow partly refutes my "theorem". So instead of "Iff A is a character in a Chinesepod episode graced by at least a first name, A will face a traumatic or even fatal event." I now propose: "If A is a character in a Chinesepod episode graced by at least a first name, then A will face a traumatic or even fatal event. If A is a generic character in a Chinesepod episode (no first name), then A might still have to endure traumatic or fatal events, but the likelihood decreases, particularly for minors." ;-) @Chinesepod: At least the minors should not be subjected to cruelty! No South Park like scenes with something like: "我的天啊，肯尼被他们干掉了! [Wǒ de tiān a, kěnní bèi tāmen gāndiào le! Oh my god, they killed Kenny!] I just remember: Wasn't there a baby crying it's lungs out because of food depravation ... Ok, it was probably just hungry, not undernourished or some cruelty.

*CPod staff sitting around slightly hungover, tapping their pencils on the their foreheads and draining pots of coffee on an early Autumn morning* Amber: So, uh, what do you want to do today? John: Let's kill Peter. Jenny: You silly Americans. So violent. John: Ninjas! Amber: We can't kill Peter. He's the center of our business lessons. John: Ninnnjaaaaasssss! Dave: How are ninjas and business relevant? Jenny: Yeah. Ninjas aren't even Chinese. They're Japanese. John: Ninjas! Ninjas! Dave: No more coffee for him....

LOL!!! Somehow that doesn't sound unrealistic at all...

And what about that poor tourist who disappeared in jizhou...? Already forgot his name. How sad is that. Lots of creative minds at Cpod, I would say

lunetta: My characters just proceeded their journey into outer space. ;) Kyle: No, no. From my visit I know all is done utterly soberly. The crew spends all day extracting parameters for a complex multi-dimensional data cube with vectors for content ("relationship", "termination", "business", "Canadians", "Japanese"), listener response (length of Changye's poems, number of replies), demographics (silliness factor, median number of beers and/or coffees before, while and after listening to a lesson), and many others. This is entered into a magic algorithm which performes a series of complex operations that combine those numbers with Google, Baidu and Wikipedia search results. The output is the optimal lesson: "Ninjas kill Peter". Expect Peter to come back with super-powers: "Hammer-Peter" will take your business vocab to the next level. @Cpod: I haven't signed a non-disclosure agreement, have I? I can reveal all this?

Did any of you ever try to write stories as kids? I remember doing the outline of a big family saga which ended with everyone dying because I didn't know how else to end it. Maybe that's what has happened to CPod.

henning, Carry on with your mission of misiniformation/disinformation. We couldn't have picked a better man for the job.

Joachim, I'll take the comparison to Star Trek as a compliment. :) And wildyaks, that Jizhou story has only just begun, so we'll see how tragic it turns out to be...

John, I hope nobody at Chinesepod is thinking of inventing something like Klingon just to spice up things. Chinese is hard enough, already! Kyle, how about a meta-episode like the one you envisaged with Chinesepod staff doing cameos or John as Jenny, Jenny as Ken, Amber as John ... ? Err. I got carried away.

Joachim, great analogy. I think every new male character Chinesepod introduces i will imagine wearing a red shirt and an american name of Johnson. Kyle, for the first time ever. I actually felt like I was in the room with the cpod staff. Henning, 'hungover' IS still utterly sober. TOO sober. Kyle, Yang Jie is Young Jenny's life story, and shoudl probably be retitled 'Jenny Zhu's Red 鞋 Diaries'.

Hey, don't forget the poor reporter who got gobbled up by 哥斯拉 ! 吞 下去了！啊！！！！

Kyle, I am starting to wonder if you have somehow bugged our office. That account was hilarious, and yet somehow has still that ring of truth....